a comparatively plain
person looks almost handsome in simple black. Now why is this? Simply
because mourning requires a severe uniformity of color and idea, and
forbids the display of that variety of colors and objects which go to
make up the ordinary female costume, and which very few women have such
skill in using as to produce really beautiful effects.

"Very similar results have been attained by the Quaker costume, which,
in spite of the quaint severity of the forms to which it adhered, has
always had a remarkable degree of becomingness, because of its
restriction to a few simple colors and to the absence of distracting
ornament.

"But the same effect which is produced in mourning or the Quaker costume
may be preserved in a style of dress admitting color and ornamentation.
A dress may have the richest fulness of color, and still the tints may
be so chastened and subdued as to produce the impression of a severe
simplicity. Suppose, for example, a golden-haired blonde chooses for the
ground-tone of her toilet a deep shade of purple, such as affords a good
background for the hair and complexion. The larger draperies of the
costume being of this color, the bonnet may be of a lighter shade of the
same, ornamented with lilac hyacinths, shading insensibly towards
rose-color. The effect of such a costume is simple, even though there be
much ornament, because it is ornament artistically disposed towards a
general result.

"A dark shade of green being chosen as the ground-tone of a dress, the
whole costume may, in like manner, be worked up through lighter and
brighter shades of green, in which rose-colored flowers may appear with
the same impression of simple appropriateness that is made by the pink
blossom over the green leaves of a rose. There have been times in France
when the study of color produced artistic effects in costume worthy of
attention, and resulted in styles of dress of real beauty. But the
present corrupted state of morals there has introduced a corrupt taste
in dress; and it is worthy of thought that the decline of moral purity
in society is often marked by the deterioration of the sense of artistic
beauty. Corrupt and dissipated social epochs produce corrupt styles of
architecture and corrupt styles of drawing and painting, as might easily
be illustrated by the history of art. When the leaders of society have
blunted their finer perceptions by dissipation and immorality, they are
incapable of feeling the